


Childish Things

by exmanhater



Series: Childish Things [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:23:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1772281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Patrick proves his hard-won maturity, Jonny reluctantly shares his feelings, and they both collect quite a bit of blackmail material. Talking about things like grown-ups is hard, okay?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childish Things

It's not that Patrick's suddenly become baby-crazy. It's also not that Jonny never wants to have kids – Patrick's good at interpreting the various (mostly nonverbal) ways in which Jonny communicates his feelings, and he's confident that when Jonny says _maybe, someday_ , with the soft smile only Patrick ever gets to see, he means it.

It's just that _someday_ keeps looking further and further away from where they are now with every passing year. Patrick doesn't want to whine, but he also knows that nothing good ever came of letting Jonny get complacent about anything.

"You once had a nightmare where you gave birth and it traumatized you," he tells Jonny one morning. Patrick is standing on one side of the breakfast bar while Jonny sits on the other, making judgmental faces at Patrick and his food choices. 

At Patrick’s opening salvo, Jonny's mouth falls open, which unfortunately means that the bite of (disgustingly healthy) cereal he'd just taken slides out of it and back into the bowl. Not an image Patrick wanted at the beginning of his day, but Jonny still looks unfairly attractive.

"What," Jonny says after wiping his mouth and chin, his spoon clattering down onto the countertop.

Patrick squints, trying to figure out how Jonny can look so good and so ridiculous at the same time. It's the unanswerable question of his life, really.

"Your parents are secretly the king and queen of a small European country, and you can't procreate without filling out succession forms in triplicate first," Patrick continues.

Jonny stares, a hint of worry creasing between his eyebrows. It's overshadowed by the familiar exasperation in his eyes, however. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"You have a gambling debt bigger than our yearly salaries combined and you're afraid you won't pay it off in time to save enough for college tuition, and you're too ashamed to talk to me about it." Patrick's been keeping a blank expression through all of this, but as an indignant look of horror takes over Jonny's face, he can't hold back his shit-eating grin. He laughs as Jonny stands up, clearly ready to defend his honor against gambling accusations. Jonny can read Patrick like a book, though, and it only takes a moment for Jonny to swallow his retort.

"What are you doing, you little monster?" Jonny says instead, coming around the edge of the counter to trap Patrick against it. Patrick stubbornly refuses to enjoy the feeling of Jonny boxing him in. He’s trying to force a serious conversation right now, not initiate sex. Perhaps he should re-evaluate his methods at some point, though, because his tactics for both are kind of the same and that’s probably confusing.

Jonny smoothes a hand over Patrick’s temple, brushing back an errant strand of hair. "You gonna tell me what’s going on?"

Patrick grins. He twists suddenly, using Jonny’s early-morning lassitude to duck down and out of Jonny’s arms, and grabs Jonny’s hand to pull him over to the couch. This is a conversation he thinks they should start sitting down. They probably won’t stay that way, but beginnings are important.

Jonny follows Patrick obediently enough, but the worry crease between his eyebrows is back and stronger than ever. 

"I’m gonna be thirty-two soon," Patrick says, and wow, he was not planning on starting with that, but his mouth had gotten ahead of his brain. "Um, I mean," he continues, "we’re both getting up there, you know? If we’re gonna - if we want to have kids, we’ve got to start planning it now."

Jonny gets that constipated look that means he’s having multiple conflicting feelings and doesn’t know how to express any of them. It’s subtly different from the constipated look that means he thinks Patrick is a moron - Patrick had learned how to spot that one early on. 

Patrick keeps talking. "And I know you said someday, and that we’re not ready yet, and I agree with you - but we’ve gotta start planning how it’s going to happen, because no matter how often you try to knock me up the old-fashioned way, it’s not gonna work like that for us."

"I - " Jonny starts to say, then lapses into silence. Patrick wriggles around on the couch until he can look at Jonny directly, sitting sideways with his knees up under his chin, his toes pushing under Jonny’s thigh. He waits patiently for a few minutes and eventually Jonny rewards him.

"I just," Jonny says. "I _do_ want - that, you know I do, right?" 

He’s carefully avoiding Patrick’s eyes, a flush of embarrassment starting to show on his neck, but he reaches out for Patrick’s hand and holds it, a rare show of vulnerability. They aren’t really that kind of couple, most of the time, and Patrick’s never wished they were. He still loves it when it happens, and he rewards Jonny in turn by twisting to lean into Jonny’s arm, keeping their hands entwined.

"Dude," Patrick says, and enjoys the way Jonny can’t help but grin. He knows they’re both remembering Erica saying, scandalized, _you call your boyfriend "dude", Patty? How do you ever get laid?_ the first time Jonny had visited him in Buffalo after they’d gotten together.

"I get it, man," Patrick continues. "I know. That’s why I’m trying to figure out what’s up, get our shit together."

Jonny nods. "Okay. But - I need to think through some stuff on my own. So, can we table it for now?"

"We can table it for now," Patrick agrees magnanimously, and continues before Jonny can make an excuse to leave and finish breakfast. "But you gotta tell me when you’re done thinking, you’re not allowed to brood alone forever."

Jonny squeezes his hand before letting go. "Deal."

+++

Of course, promising to let Jonny think doesn’t in any way prohibit Patrick from coming up with his own wild speculations about what, precisely, Jonny’s hang-up is about having kids. Jonny puts up with it gracefully (for him), and Patrick’s pretty sure that means Jonny’s judgement when it comes to him is severely impaired. Patrick’s definitely not complaining about that, however.

"You already have six children you’ve been hiding in a house somewhere, and you can’t afford any more child support," Patrick says one evening, while they’re lounging in bed together. Patrick’s ostensibly reading the latest teen novel his sisters sent him, but baiting Jonny is much more fun.

Jonny glances up from his phone and gives Patrick a dirty look. "That’s so stupid it doesn’t even deserve to be acknowledged," he says, turning back to whatever he’s doing on his phone and ignoring Patrick’s jabs to his side.

Patrick just doesn’t have it in him to let Jonny get away with ignoring him. He switches to poking Jonny’s leg with his foot, and says "okay, maybe it’s that you were once arrested for public underage drunkenness, and you - oh, wait. That actually happened."

Jonny’s hands still around his phone, and Patrick grins in triumphant glee when Jonny carefully puts the phone down on the bedside table and turns a deadly stare his way.

"You’re going to regret that," Jonny says, trying to hide the fact that he thinks Patrick is adorable. Which, whatever, Patrick knows all of Jonny’s tells and right now he is finding Patrick as adorable as hell.

"Oh, yeah?" Patrick asks. Wait, he hadn’t meant that to come out quite so breathlessly. 

Jonny glares, which Patrick has been conditioned over the years to find sexy, and rolls over until he’s on top of Patrick, pressing him into the mattress with his hands braced on either side of Patrick’s head. Patrick’s book goes flying to the floor, but it’s a paperback, it’ll survive.

"One," Jonny says, in a low voice. "It was only underage drunkenness because of _your_ country’s stupid and inconsistent rules." He starts to suck a hickey on Patrick’s neck, to which Patrick has absolutely no objections.

"Two," Jonny says, once he can be persuaded to leave Patrick’s neck alone (Patrick is _so_ not the only one with a biting fetish, no matter what Jonny says). "I know what you’re doing."

Patrick grins. "Being a supportive boyfriend who genuinely cares about your messed up psyche?"

"Goading me into paying attention to you," Jonny says. "You could just ask, you know," he adds smugly.

"I don’t need your attention," Patrick scoffs. "I don’t need anything from you."

"You want it, though," Jonny whispers into Patrick’s ear. "You always want it."

That is _not_ playing fair, Patrick thinks. That just won’t do. He tells Jonny, "if you make some sort of crack about me wanting your dick, I’m going to tell Sharpy you like getting fucked best after you’ve already come."

"Do that, and I’ll never touch your dick again," Jonny says calmly. 

Patrick scowls. "You’re no fun," he says, then adds, slyly, "Captain Serious."

Jonny shoves his hand unceremoniously into Patrick’s boxer briefs and starts stroking his dick just right, quickly turning Patrick’s semi into a full-on erection. "I’ll show you fun," he says, putting his mouth back on Patrick’s throat.

The sex that follows is totally in their top ten greatest fucks ever, in Patrick’s humble opinion, and he forgets all about hassling Jonny about kids for the rest of the night.

+++

It finally comes out in the most inconvenient place possible. Jonny’s been tolerating Patrick’s increasingly ridiculous guesses for more than two weeks ("You’re a mutant and you can actually get pregnant, but you’re afraid I won’t find that sexy"), which Patrick does know is pushing his luck. He still isn’t prepared for what happens.

Patrick’s messing around with Shawzy, talking trash and getting psyched up for their game against the Kings. He’s mostly over the 2014 playoff series with the Kings, but sometimes it still burns and the easiest way to get over it is to get out of his head a little. Shawzy’s always good for that, so he’s teasing Shawzy about his new daughter, because Shawzy’s pretty convinced he’s going to mess the kid up for life and someone needs to give him shit about it.

"Don’t mind him," Sharpy yells to Shawzy from across the room, interrupting Patrick’s latest insult. "Little man’s just jealous. His biological clock is ticking loud enough that I can hear it from here."

Shawzy grins. "Yeah, when is Tazer gonna knock you up, or least make an honest man out of you, anyway?"

Patrick laughs, then affects a mournful look and sighs down at his left hand conspicuously. He can feel Jonny’s gaze snap to him from where Jonny’s been talking to Crow, and he struggles to keep himself from laughing again. "I don’t know," he says sadly, touching his empty ring finger with his right hand. "I’m giving him the best years of my life, and he still won’t put a ring on it."

Sharpy comes over and puts an arm around Patrick’s shoulders. "You two as parents is not something I want to think about, Peeks," he says. "That poor kid."

"Fuck you, I’d be an awesome dad," Patrick says. "Jonny, on the other hand…" 

Now the whole room is watching and laughing, and Shawzy’s doubled over with it. Patrick feels like he’s accomplished something important, even if he’s half the butt of his own joke. He shrugs Sharpy off and looks back to Jonny, ready to grin and accept Jonny’s mocking.

Jonny - Jonny’s not laughing, is the problem. Patrick feels his own smile slip away at the look on Jonny’s face, his eyes shining with hurt before he schools his expression into something shuttered and blank. Patrick doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jonny look like that before, not at him. He tries to get over to Jonny, apologize and figure out what the hell he said, but Jonny slips out before he can and then it’s too late, they have a game to play.

The game is - well, they win, but that’s about all Patrick can say about it. It’s not the kind of win worth remembering. He’s not on Jonny’s line at the moment, and every time Patrick tries to find a minute to talk to him, Jonny slips away. During the intermission between the second and third periods, he manages to snag him for about two seconds.

"Jonny," he says, gripping Jonny’s jersey in his hand to stop him from running, not caring that their whole team is in the same room. "Please, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sor - "

Jonny yanks out of Patrick’s reach. "Don’t," he says. His voice sounds awful. "Just don’t, Kaner."

The third period goes by the way the last two had, with Jonny ignoring all of Patrick’s attempts to talk. The Kings have figured out that Jonny’s distracted tonight and have been targeting him for increasingly bad hits. Patrick knows the rest of their team has figured it out, too, and everyone’s doing their best to keep Jonny safe. But it’s not like hockey is a particularly safe game in the first place, and when Jonny makes it to the locker room after the third, he’s got a long, shallow cut along his forehead. Patrick can only guess at what bruises might be hiding under his pads.

Patrick rushes through his post-game interviews, but Jonny still beats him back home in what has to be a minor miracle given how long Jonny’s own interviews tend to go. They’ve only been living together full-time for a year, and Patrick still has his own condo for emergencies and the sake of appearances. This is the first time he’s actually considered going there, but he decides to at least see if Jonny will let him in first.

Patrick’s not as dumb as most people assume - he knows something about being a father is seriously tripping Jonny up, and apparently it’s bad enough that making jokes about parenting skills has sparked what he knows is going to be their first real fight in months. But he doesn’t _want_ to fight with Jonny - he wants to go back in time and stop himself from saying anything about it in the locker room of all places, or further back to force Jonny to spill instead of sitting in silence with what has to be a pretty big deal.

Patrick prepares himself for being contrite, and grovelling until Jonny relents and forgives him, and knocks on the door before going inside.

"Jonny, I’m so sorry," he calls out from the entryway. "I know I fucked up, and I can leave if you want me to, but - " he stops, not sure how to go on.

Jonny appears in the hallway, his face still blank. Patrick wants to hug him so badly, but he forces himself to keep still and let Jonny choose how this will go.

"You - " Jonny’s voice sounds wrecked, low and raspy, but not in the good way Patrick usually associates with blowjobs. He’s wearing his comfort clothes, an old, faded UND shirt and threadbare sweatpants he’s had since their rookie year.

"You shouldn’t leave," Jonny finishes a full minute later, but he’s still not looking at Patrick.

"What - what should I do? I _am_ sorry, babe, really fucking sorry."

Jonny sighs, and reaches out for Patrick’s hand. He tugs Patrick into the bedroom and pushes him gently onto their bed. Patrick is too surprised to resist and ends up sitting against the headboard, kicking off his shoes while Jonny paces back and forth in front of the bed. Eventually, Jonny stops and faces Patrick.

"You shouldn’t - " he says, then shakes his head, clearly frustrated with himself. "You shouldn’t feel bad, it was just a stupid joke and I overreacted."

Patrick nearly drops his jaw in surprise. "What the fuck?" he asks. "It clearly wasn’t just a joke, I’ve never seen you shut down so fast before. Of course I feel bad!"

Seriously, fuck Jonny if he’s going to try and let Patrick off the hook for this. That’s not how they _work_. Patrick feels himself working into a righteous fury.

"I hurt you," he continues, since Jonny’s just staring at him. "I think I’d be a piss-poor boyfriend if I didn’t feel bad about that!"

"You didn’t mean to," Jonny says, sitting down on the foot of the bed, cross-legged and facing Patrick. "It’s my decision to be hurt or not, and I’m not, so drop it, okay?"

Patrick opens his mouth to start yelling that he’ll feel as bad as he damn well pleases, but he sees Jonny taking a breath to do the same, and as their eyes meet, they both deflate, realizing how ridiculous they sound. Patrick starts laughing, and Jonny gives him a sheepish grin. The tension’s broken, just like that, and Patrick knows everything is going to be fine.

"Dude," Patrick says, between laughs. "Are we actually fighting about whether or not I should be apologizing?" He moves forward and pulls Jonny closer until they’re lying down and wrapped up together, legs tangled. Patrick catalogs all the bruises he sees on Jonny, reminding himself to make sure Jonny ices them later. Jonny probably didn’t remember to do it himself while he was brooding in the dark and waiting for Patrick to get home.

"Don’t ever tell Sharpy," Jonny says, hand scratching gently through Patrick’s hair. "I get enough shit from him already."

"It’s a deal," Patrick replies. "We take this fight to the grave."

He pulls back from Jonny’s chest and holds out his hand so they can shake on it. Jonny laughs, shaking his hand, and then pulls Patrick into a kiss. A few minutes later, Patrick realizes they’re on their way to makeup sex, and while he’d normally be all over that, he’s still in his suit and Jonny hasn’t actually told him what’s wrong.

"Whoa, hold up," he says, struggling to sit up and start unbuttoning his shirt. Jonny grunts in disapproval when Patrick actually gets off the bed, but sits up to help him get rid of his pants. When Jonny starts to pull a mostly-naked Patrick back onto the bed, Patrick twists out of reach.

"You’ve got to spill, dude," he tells Jonny. "I’m not having this whole fight again every time I make a bad joke."

"Do I have to?" Jonny asks. He’s pouting like a toddler.

"Yup," Patrick says cheerily. "You have no choice, give it up."

"Will you at least sit down while I tell you?"

Patrick obligingly sits on the bed, next to Jonny so that Jonny can pretend he’s talking to himself while still pressed up against Patrick’s shoulder for comfort.

"C’mon," Patrick says quietly. "It can’t be worse than anything I’ve suggested."

Jonny sighs. "You’re going to be a great dad," he says, just as quietly. "I’m… not."

"Excuse you, of course you are," Patrick says indignantly. "What the fuck?"

Jonny twists around so that he can look Patrick in the eye. "You’re great with kids. You’re going to be the fun dad who lets them do cool stuff, and I’m going to lecture them about eating healthily and they’re going to hate me. That’s if I don’t drop them while they’re infants so that you have to leave me and raise them alone so they won’t get childhood concussions."

Patrick is honestly shocked. "You get that that’s just as ridiculous as you being the heir to a small European country, right?"

Jonny looks away.

"Well, okay, clearly it doesn’t feel that way to you," Patrick continues. "But, like, I’m pretty sure you are the only person in the entire universe who thinks you’d be a worse parent than me." Patrick considers for a moment. "Well, maybe Sharpy thinks that, but he’s a tool."

Jonny grins faintly, which had, of course, been Patrick’s entire goal.

"Come on," Patrick says, nudging Jonny’s shoulder. "You gonna let Sharpy’s dumb opinions keep you from having a family with me?"

"I guess not," Jonny says, lifting an eyebrow to let Patrick know he’s aware of how Patrick’s manipulating him.

"I wouldn’t want to have kids without you," Patrick says. "So, we can wait. It’d be a lot to have small kids right now with our schedules. But let’s decide if we’re going with adoption or surrogacy, and then when we’re ready, we’ll have a plan."

Jonny pulls Patrick into his lap and kisses him, which Patrick is going to assume means _yes_. When Jonny breaks the kiss, he’s looking at Patrick with a new expression, one Patrick’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen before. It’s a mix of pride and confusion, he thinks, along with something else he can’t quite parse.

"When did you grow up?" Jonny asks. "I think I missed it."

"Shows you what happens when all you do is make fun of me," Patrick replies. "I’m not any more grown-up than you. I just know what I want."

Jonny nods. "Well, I know what I want, too."

Patrick grins. "Does what you want include a blowjob?" he asks.

"When doesn’t it?" Jonny says, pupils dilating, and shoves Patrick down the bed.

+++

That obviously isn’t the end of the conversation. Patrick puts on a good front, but he’s nervous about being a parent, too, and they’ll need to talk long and hard about things to decide what they want to do. Patrick has fond dreams of seeing if one of his sisters will donate eggs or be their surrogate so that the kids will be a genetic mix of Kane and Toews, but that might be too much to ask of them. There are lots of kids who need parents already, and he feels a little selfish for wanting a baby with Jonny’s brown eyes and serious expression.

But that’s in the future, and right now Patrick’s immediate goal is to get Jonny comfortable with his parenting skills. Jonny doesn’t know it, but they’re about to become the official Blackhawks babysitters. Jonny will thank him for it later. He always does.

 

[the end.]


End file.
